Train your body, and your brain
Dr. Tracey J. Shors, a neuroscience and psychology professor at Rutgers University who has been studying the female brain and stress for 30 years, stumbled on meditation only about 10 years ago after a friend recommended it. “I thought it was about relaxing, but I was wrong,” she said. “It’s a way of learning how your own mind works.”
The experience propelled her to launch a study on what she already knew about aerobic exercise (that’s anything that gets your heart rate up and increases brain function) combined with meditation to help women who have had sexually violent experiences. In her research, Dr. Shors found that mental and physical training, or “MAP” training, which includes practicing meditation for 30 minutes followed by 30 minutes of exercise twice a week, helped women recover from traumatic sexual experiences.
Not only did participants have fewer trauma-related thoughts, but the training increased their feelings of self-worth. Most importantly, she said, participants had fewer repetitive thoughts about their past experiences.
“Every time you have a thought about the past, you theoretically make a new memory. And in some cases it’s good to bring up the memory because you want to learn not to respond to them. But if they’re coming up in a stressful way, maybe not so much,” she said. “The only way you can learn about your own mind is if you sit down and listen to it.”
Ground yourself
It is not uncommon for assault survivors to feel disconnected from their bodies. It’s described as an almost alien feeling — that you’re looking in at yourself from the outside. Grounding techniques can help people who are recovering from trauma reconnect with themselves, said Josie Torielli, the senior intervention consultant for the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault.
“Grounding is really just being able to put yourself in the present moment in a way that’s not threatening and that’s calming,” she said. One grounding method Ms. Torielli uses in practice is the “5, 4 , 3 , 2 , 1 method,” which you can practice on your own or with a therapist. It’s a full sensory exercise: She asks people to name five things they can see in a room, four things they can hear in the room, three things they can touch or feel, two things they can smell and one good quality about themselves.